Wafers are used in a variety of applications, including diode and integrated circuit devices. Wafers may be comprised of different materials. Known applications may use wafers made of silicon, or the like. For silicon wafers, the silicon crystal is grown to create the wafer. Silicon is included in the wafer because of its desirable electrical properties.
As silicon is grown via crystals holes appear on the surface of the wafer. The holes may be known as polishing local defects ("PLD"). PLDs may have the shape of a hole with a diameter and a depth varying between 1 to 10 micrometers. PLDs may be induced during polishing, however, the center of the PLDs are created by dislocations in the crystal lattice during the growing of the silicon crystal on the wafer.
In most known applications, it may be acceptable to have a wafer surface smooth down to 10 Angstroms. Thus, the majority of the area on the wafer surface is smooth, while the remaining surface includes holes. For example, the average number of holes per square centimeter may be 1 in the center of the wafer and about 10 near the edges of the wafer. Known methods and applications, however, have been inadequate in reducing the number of holes per square centimeter on the wafers for sub-atomic applications. Wafer surfaces that are used in piezo-electric devices, such as sandwiches having a cathode and an anode, may exhibit detrimental affects due to PLDs. A PLD may result in a short circuit between electrodes in diode applications.
Silicon crystals having almost no PLDs are grown in orbit to overcome the gravitation influence on the crystal growing process. The orbit growing process, however, is expensive and time-consuming. Further, access to orbit growing device platforms is prohibitive.